When I woke up from a dream of music, I still found myself in the rubble of dream. Yumegareki, rubble of dream, is named in phonetic association with "Yumenoki," dream notes written by Saint Myoue in thirteenth century. It recounts the dream of contrabass music on a cheerful tune. I listen mainly to the albums in the contrabass collection that I received last year from Sebastian Schaffmeister, a bassist in Germany.*If you have any comment, please send it to me via “Contact.”

contrabass solo／cd／amor fati／2007【Yumegareki 040】Listening to the impromptu live performance titled “Being,” I was spontaneously thinking back on Chuang Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher, who pursued the concept of “naturalness and nonaction”. He viewed things with relative magnitudes. As seen in his famous “the dream of the butterfly,” we can imagine that he entered the world consisted of both reality and dream, or nature and natural. Listening to Paul’s improvised sounds from afar, I felt a difference from myself.

Pascal Quignard, a French writer and musician, said that any artist must agree to abandon his/her life and that there is no difference in your capabilities of performing, creating, exposing yourself and dying in public. His words make me wonder what “Being” really means in terms of playing music.It raises a question of what constitutes the act of performance, rather than how to perform. It also asks about our body which is closely related to life and death. According to Chuang Tzu, a wind reverberates in a myriad of caves, but the wind itself has no sound. The caves represent the performers and the body of the performers is a shield, blocking the wind of death and creating sounds.

Our bodies always send something to the world and engage in creative activities. If this is true, the awareness of being myself and the consciousness of my sound are detached from me when I close my eyes and try to listen. Then some unexpected association and miracle may happen through my body. The sound carrying the invisible miracle doesn’t exist in the sound I made. Nor does the sound have me inside.I wonder whether listening to the wind of nature, exposing myself to the big wave of inaudible sound, facing our own death and asking about it, can be the art of creation. Asking about “Being” may go beyond the boundary of improvisation, continue to create "being" and exist as the source of creation.残念なことに、いま腰痛があって、仕事に出かけてかえってくるのがやっとの体だ。身体を休息するための休みは貴重だと感じる。ときどき身体を動かす度に痛みが水を差すようにおとずれ、聴くのに最低限必要な身体感覚すらをも妨げてくる。いまは身体に不要な音をできるだけ聴きたくはないとどこかで感じているらしい。あるいはそれはまた、いま何かを聴こうとできる状況ではないということなのかもしれない。ただ救われるのは遠くから聞こえてくる近所の自然な音だ。無理をして聴くという行為がせっかくの音楽自身を死なせてしまうこともあるだろうが、こんな状況でも一枚のベースソロアルバムを聴こうとする自分がいるのもまた、いまの僕自身の自然なのだと、なんとか無理をして言ってみたい。荘子の有名な『渾沌』の項にあるように、そこにある作品に外部から不要な穴をあければ、その作為によってあるがままの作品は死んでしまうだろう。「Being」…もっと読む... Read more...